BY SUSAN DE WEGER
Building a loyal audience is one of the biggest challenges facing young artists. Most young classical musicians experience four years of higher education that ignore the skills required to imagine and build a creative career. For these academic music students, this promotes the trope that selling our work means ‘selling out’.
Without marketing, no one can know about you and what you have to offer.
You may have the greatest music in the world, but without marketing, you lose the opportunity to connect with the people who could love and support your work.
Rather than thinking of marketing as sleazy selling, we need to reframe our mindset to believe that our work (concerts, teaching, or composing) is valuable and in demand. Our job as creative artists is to share our work with the world, and let the audience decide if it’s right for them.
That’s not so scary or sleazy, is it?
Here are some first steps to help you to connect your music with your people.
Make a list
When you’re starting out, your audience will consist of your friends, family, and peers. Start your audience database by creating an online spreadsheet with relevant and useful information about people who are interested in your work.
I’ll provide my own sample to get you started. Set up the spreadsheet using the following column headers:
- Today’s date 02/07/2018
- Your connection Former teacher
- First name John
- Surname Smith
- Preferred name Johnny
- Home city Melbourne
- Email john.smith@junkmail.com
- Mobile 0411 111 111
- Job title Head of Music and Low Brass Teacher
- Employer Hervey High School
- Preferred method of contact Email
- Concerts attended John came to wind quintet gig on 19/05/18, John came to end of year recital 11/10/2017
- Personal likes John likes new classical music, supports young artists in jazz, likes low brass, plays in a brass band, likes concerts in unusual locations.
So now, we have useful information that we can use to tailor invitations. We know about the interests of each individual, and how to reach them in a way that gets their attention. John reads his email (great!) but your peers might not, they might only read Facebook messages. So don’t send your friends emails and don’t Facebook message John.
Connecting your music to your people
A lot of classical music marketing feels like a plea to audiences to come.
We’ve all seen those Facebook posts the day before a gig, or even worse, on the day of a gig: ‘Hey, everyone come to my gig that’s on this afternoon puh-lease. I know I should have told you earlier’.
Yuck! It’s selfish and ineffective.
The secret to selling without selling out is to design your marketing for them, not for you; and to get your message to those who could be interested in plenty of time. Rather than preaching to audiences or begging for a favour, it’s more effective to use your emotional intelligence and market research to know what your audience likes.
Here’s a sample that can be used for emails or Facebook messages to promote a concert:
Hi John,
[Make it about them; ask how they are. Acknowledge if you haven’t seen each other in a while.]
I hope this finds you and your family well. I‘m sorry we haven’t had the chance to catch up recently.
[Write something about John’s work; be interested in his work, show that you care about what he does. If this is for family or friends, then make this about your personal connection, and ask about what’s going on in their life.]
I have been following the HHS music department and am hoping to make it to the end of semester concert as my brother is playing in the Symphonic Band.
[Now, we can finally talk about your work.]
There is a concert in July that I thought you may be interested in.
[List all the things that John likes that are part of this concert; make it about his interests only.]
I know you like new Australian compositions and brass music, so I thought that my Brass Quintet gig on 20 July would be right up your alley. We are playing the world premiere of a commission by Melbourne composer Jane Smith, and it has terrific trombone and tuba parts!
The quintet, Laura and Sam (trumpets), Chris (horn), Heather (tuba) and I are having loads of fun preparing. The gig starts at 6.30pm and will be finished by 7.30pm, with no interval and tickets are available [insert link to ticketing] online.
It would be great to see you there. Please let me know if you can make it so I can keep an eye out for you after the gig to say hi. If you know anyone else who may be keen, please feel free to forward this information.
[However you sign off your emails] Regards,
[Your name and links to your website and social media]
So the next time you are playing a gig, instead of posting a bland plea to come to the gig, try these more targeted, strategic steps.
Next Steps
If you have 5 minutes: Create the online audience database using the suggested column headers.
If you have 30 minutes: Add 10+ people to your audience database. If you’re part of an ensemble, ask the other players to add 10+ people each, and suddenly you’ve got 40+ folks who care about your gig.
If you have 1 hour: Make a list of your gigs in the next six months that need an audience. Create reminders in your email calendar to send tailored invitations to your audience database at least one month before the gig, ensure that tickets are on sale at least one month before the gig.
ABOUT SUSAN
Susan de Weger is passionate that you thrive on beyond the stage. She is Associate Lecturer in Music (Entrepreneurship) at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, and designs careers programs for the Australian National Academy of Music, Australian Youth Orchestra, and Melbourne Recital Centre. If you need a careers whisperer, she works privately with musicians all around the country in person and via Skype. You can find her @Notable Values.
